Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons: A Novel

From her sensational sleeper hit Patty Jane's House of Curl to her heartwarming novel Welcome to the Great Mysterious, Lorna Landvik has won the hearts of readers everywhere by skillfully balancing hilarity with pathos, and bittersweet insights with heartwarming truths. Now she returns to her beloved, eccentric stomping ground of small-town Minnesota where the most eclectic, and engaging group of women you'll ever meet share love, loss, and laughter.

Sometimes life is like a bad waiter—it serves you exactly what you don't want. The women of Freesia Court have come together at life's table, fully convinced that there is nothing good coffee, delectable desserts, and a strong shoulder can't fix. Laughter is the glue that holds them together—the foundation of a book group they call AWEB—Angry Wives Eating Bon Bons—an unofficial "club" that becomes much more. It becomes a lifeline.

The five women each have a story of their own to tell. There's Faith, the newcomer, a lonely housewife and mother of twins, a woman who harbors a terrible secret that has condemned her to living a lie; big, beautiful Audrey, the resident sex queen who knows that good posture and an attitude can let you get away with anything; Merit, the shy, quiet doctor's wife with the face of an angel and the private hell of an abusive husband; Kari, a thoughtful, wise woman with a wonderful laugh as "deep as Santa Claus's with a cold" who knows the greatest gifts appear after life's fiercest storms; and finally, Slip, activist, adventurer, social changer, a tiny, spitfire of a woman who looks trouble straight in the eye and challenges it to arm wrestle.

Holding on through forty eventful years—through the swinging Sixties, the turbulent Seventies, the anything-goes Eighties, the nothing's-impossible Nineties—the women will take the plunge into the chaos that inevitably comes to those with the temerity to be alive and kicking. Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons depicts a special slice of American life, of stay-at-home days and new careers, children and grandchildren, bold beginnings and second chances, in which the power of forgiveness, understanding, and the perfectly timed giggle fit is the CPR that mends broken hearts and shattered dreams.

Once again Lorna Landvik leaves you laughing and crying, as she reveals perhaps the greatest truth: that there is nothing like the saving grace of best friends.

"Highly entertaining . . . Almost as hard to put down [as] Mary McCarthy's The Group."
    THE SEATTLE TIMES

"A lively story as delectable as a five-pound box of chocolates . . . A thoroughly engaging chronicle of friendship and the substantive place it holds in women's lives."
   ANNE LECLAIRE, AUTHOR OF LEAVING EDEN

"It is impossible not to get caught up in the lives of the book group members. . . . Landvik's gift lies in bringing these familiar women to life with insight and humor."
    THE DENVER POST

"A guilty pleasure . . . This light, snappy read may be her best yet."
    MIDWEST LIVING MAGAZINE

"Honesty, humor, and profound emotion . . . are the hallmarks of the book. Told alternately from each woman's perspective, and ranging in time from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, Landvik accurately captures the thinking, the culture, and the feeling of each decade. . . . [She] treats her characters, whose stories drive the nove